In Conclusion
by Vashagud
Summary: Two soldiers have a talk on opposite sides of a door at one am. Sephiroth/Zack


Even through his gloves he could feel the cold plastic of his phone.

It was almost the same coldness he'd felt when he was seventeen-eighteen-nineteen who really knew---

and he'd leaned down and put his fingers flush against a dead man's cheek.

It was the first time.

The boy was young, Wutain. And his sword was still and sharp inside a liquid sleeve of blood.

Silver and red, a gleaming stream from the hilt.

Silver and red, because he couldn't keep the blood out of his hair either.

His phone was cold, because it was off.

Off like the lights in the city below his apartment, or like a 'friend' into the forest dark,

whose body returns inside pile of missives.

"Open up Sephiroth!"

----

He could break the General's door down if he wanted,

he could stand there all night in the darkness of the hallway and brood with the stars,

wait for him to emerge just so he could push him back inside, sit down with some apple pie and ask him how it feels, no---

if he feels anything _at all, _because one of his friends is dead and he's been as scarce as a goddamned roach in the light. Oh yeah, and he's gonna say it just like that. He doesn't care how many demerits--

"What is it Fair?"

His feels his eyes shoot up like they're connected to strings somehow anchored on the sound of the General's voice. He can only stare at him in the doorway,

incredulous, furious, so furious he felt _stupid_ with it. And he can't close his eyes.

"I can't close my eyes." he says, like a-- _Odin's balls..._like such an _idiot._

But it's a coincidental truth, he can't close his eyes, he can't sleep because every time he does he just sees--

----

"I'm sorry to hear that."

His phone is off, and still he is standing in the doorway, listening to _this._

The boy is standing out in the dark hallway, shadows moving around the green in his eyes like the dark pupils are bleeding out.

"No you're not."

The clatter of the boy's heartbeat makes him want to shut the door in his face, knock him back so that he doesn't get tears on on his door. Oh, he's not crying yet, but it only seems like a matter of time. He doesn't feel like dealing with a weeping heart at one am.

He doesn't want to _see_ it.

"Goodnight Zack." His jaw feels like it's tightened down by screws, just like everyone of his fingertips to the inside of his hand. He releases his fist, and breathes in silently. It he could just go back to his apartment, retire next to the dark face of his phone...

"Don't...don't pretend like you don't know why I'm here."

----

This isn't how he imagined the encounter going. In his most righteous fantasies, not dreams because that wasn't happening anymore-- he had cursed, yelled, fought, done brave, stupid things.

Maybe one out of two wasn't bad, but, yeah it _was_, his sword felt like it was still dripping even as it sparkled as clean as he could get it against his back.

He could almost feel the moisture, the wet spread of it through his shirt, and his boots felt like they were full of it. His knuckles were still sore from a night of scrubbing and he rationalized that maybe, that's why he couldn't make a fist now, couldn't even think about sparring with the General like an asshole standing at a door at one am.

But that wasn't it. He knew could probably fight up even if he was beaten, maybe minutes away from death, but Sephiroth was standing there like that and he couldn't...didn't want to believe it was true but--

"Do you really not care?"

"Fair-"

"No... _Zack." _He corrected, pushing a hand across his face, through his hair. "Angeal is dead." Sephiroth only watched him, no reaction. "And I...was the one to kill him.." Zack didn't even bother to see if there was any reaction to that. "He was your friend too, wasn't he?"

Zack's skin crawled in the silence, in the light of Sephiroth's white empty face in the doorway. His skin crawled because of the silence, the profound kind that always follows a case of spilled guts.

The thing was he hadn't meant to, he definitely hadn't _wanted_ to spill his guts, or to seem so wounded and desperate, but there it was. Here he is, and part of him doesn't care that he can't stop saying stupid things that make it clear how tough he isn't, that paint a picture in the radical chiaroscuro between them of an unfeeling general.

"Wasn't he?" he repeats, hoping for a glimmer of recognition, something in the General's eyes that might make him seem a little less like a machine set firmly on _off._

----

Friend. Laughter bubbles up in his throat so quickly he only realizes his reaction until it's echoing in the hallway and Zack's eyes (which are still mostly blue, still mostly optimistic, but that all will change) go wide, and narrow quickly down to slits.

Laughing felt a lot like the uncontrollable retching he'd done the first few days in Wutai. He can remember hands holding his hair back, someone reading Loveless as his dinner spilled wet onto the ground.

He remembers 'deceased' in black letters on white paper, staring at it like he had never learned to read. Thinking maybe it was just words that started with d, because 'desertion' didn't seem to make any sense either.

"Angeal was only ever friend to his honor."

"You don't believe that."

In that instant, he imagines that all of the hope the boy will lose is resting in his own hands.

Later it might be easier for him, if he took it all now.

"Does it matter what I believe?"

----

Zack knew it shouldn't, and in favor of whatever dignity he had left he thought to say 'no, no it doesn't matter what you believe, I don't care what you think, because I know(knew) Angeal and he was our friend, and I don't need you to tell me that it was the right thing for me to-

'Yeah...yeah it does." he said, turning his head to look down the dark expanse of the hallway.

"Isn't this what you wanted, what you all want?"

_"What?"_

_You all, _is what Sephiroth says and it strikes Zack that he has been put into a group Sephiroth does not consider himself to be apart of. A week ago, it might have made him want to reach out, but now all he wants to do is reach out with his least bruised hand and start something in the physical language he speaks better than anything else.

"What _do_ we all want?"

The moment he feels himself become genuinely angry, Sephiroth's eyes flash in the dark. He doesn't doubt it's on account of some unseen current, because soldiers just work like that. It's like being related by blood, but he's sure that doesn't mean anything to Sephiroth either.

----

"Glory." It was what they all wanted.

"I...I...you think..."

"You wanted to be a hero didn't you?" What they all wanted.

"You mean...like you? I think I'd rather have honor."

"And you will die with it, just like he did."

"How can you..."

"If honor leads you to follow your friends to ruin, what good is it? What good are heroes who cannot _save their own friends?" _

_----_

It seemed like another dig, another hard slap dealt in the kind of rhetoric he could only match with his fists.

But then, Sephiroth is looking at him and he's looking back and he realizes that Sephiroth isn't talking about him at all. Almost at the same time Sephiroth seems to realize what he has exposed and he straightens in the doorway, the switch flung so quickly back to off, Zack has no time to attempt to answer the question before the door is closing in his face.

"Sephiroth, wait!"

But the door is closed before he can say anything. He can hear his own frantic breathing in his ears, and he can't see anything but the familiar darkness of the hallway. Carefully he lays his forehead against the door.

"I...I don't know if you're still there. But I'm gonna talk anyway." Zack paused, searching for the right thing to say. "I didn't come to fight with you...well, I kinda did, but I guess I just wanted someone to tell me that I did the right thing. I mean, I'm still not sure about that but I know he was my friend and maybe it's better I was there, you know? Being friends means going through the shitstorm, and getting dirty and...waking you up at one am to try and get some kind of peace of mind." _Which I didn't actually get. _He laughed.

"I just wanted to tell you that it doesn't always end like that. You can't always save your friends, but it doesn't always end like that." Zack swallowed, feeling his speech was as much for him as it was for Sephiroth. "And as for how it starts...it can start right here with you and me, you know? We can be friends. Damnit, we _are _friends." He paused again, to listen for any noise inside. But there was nothing, not even a breath. For a moment, he wondered if Sephiroth had just gone to bed, but then suddenly it didn't seem to matter. He was going to say what he had to say. And he knew _exactly _what he was going to say.

"And if it did end in ruin, on my _honor, _I'd follow you to it. Even if the chance of getting you back was so slim it was nearly impossible, even if it _kills me_. Not for glory or anything, but just because of where it started."


End file.
